Japanese Robot Uses iPhone as Toy Dog's Face

Monday March 26, 2012 9:59 AM PDT by Jordan Golson

Our sister-site TouchArcade points out this Japanese iPhone-powered robot dog. The "dog" is an app that is installed on the iPhone or iPod Touch and then acts as the face of the virtual pet. The dog was originally reported by Japanese blog Mac Otakara.

The smart pet uses the front facing camera on the iOS device to recognize and react to certain gestures, and there will be over 100 different kinds of expressions that the pet can make. There will also be support for importing your own photos of your pets (or whoever you want, really), and there will be some sort of Bluetooth connectivity to allow multiple smart pets to interact with each other. And, perhaps most important of all, your smart pet comes equipped with the ability to sneeze. Sounds adorable.

The tamagotchi-like app launches in Japan on March 31 and the pet body will be available after that -- no details on pricing however. Neither the app nor the dog itself have been confirmed for U.S. release.

Watch the video at around 0:40. The dog makes a run for the edge of the table and the guy has to grab it and pull it back.

Imagine if he hadn't caught it (or if you bought one and it did something similar and you didn't catch it): The dog runs off the table and shatters its face - your iPhone's glass front screen - on the ground.

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